Meanwhile, producer Kate, who recently moved from ‘Emmerdale’ to ‘Corrie’, has promised to put strong women at the centre of the long-running soap.

“The presence of strong women was the backbone of the show as Tony Warren created it,” she tells Radio Times.

“The tone and content of the stories have moved on, and so have the female characters, but that strength has still to be there for it to be truly Corrie.

“On Emmerdale, I was uncomfortably aware that I’d been responsible for the deaths of a number of women characters and I didn’t want to repeat that. I did feel like I was punishing the women.

“When the sense of the downtrodden is relentless, the audience starts to disengage. So on Coronation Street, I wanted to see the characters face trauma, but to come out the other end. There had to be journeys of triumph and strength.”